Poor quality wire laid around river and below river (9)
I believe the answer is:
execrable
'poor' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'quality wire laid around river and below river' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'around' could be 'c' (abbreviation for 'circa') and 'c' is found within the answer.
'river' could be 'exe' (River Exe) and 'exe' is located in the answer.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for execrable that I've seen before include "Extremely bad or unpleasant" , "Hated" , "Appallingly bad" , "Appalling, abhorrent" , "Awful" .)